stars don't stand still in the sky
by ncfan
Summary: Naturally, he'd not told them his real name. Maglor was simply glad that his twisted hands were still good for something.


I own nothing.

* * *

When he journeyed to Númenor, he knew that he would have to stay away from the coast. As much as the calling of the Silmaril made him ache, as much as it made his twisted hands scream in old pain, Maglor knew that he was going to have to stay away from the coasts. He was not insensible of the things that were whispered about him; he knew that if anyone came across a Quendë with scarred hands wandering Númenor's shores, there would be trouble. Maglor had no desire to return to Aman, and he knew that if any of his own people found him out, they would likely force him to return. He had even less desire to return to Aman in chains.

Maglor had known also that he would have to find employment. Though the rules of hospitality towards traveling strangers were much the same among the Númenoreans as they were among the Edain of Endóre, they took a dim view towards beggars. Maglor could not feed himself by begging for his bread or by relying on the kindness of those around him, not here. If he wanted to live in Númenor for any amount of time, he was going to have to find work.

He skirted away from Eldalondë, Andúnië, and the Andustar in general. Andustar and its two chief cities were rumored to resemble Aman greatly in the style of their buildings and the plant life it boasted, but Maglor knew that if their architecture resembled anything, it would be the Falmari's. He had no wish to see that, no wish to see a place that was supposed to resemble his forsaken home, and besides, Maglor had been told that there were semi-permanent populations of Quendi both in Eldalondë and Andúnië; they could be found all across the Andustar. Armenelos and Rómenna were avoided for the same reason.

Instead, Maglor ventured inland, and eventually made his way to a small estate belonging to a lesser lord in the Emerië.

He thanked whoever might still be willing to listen to his prayers that his hands were not completely useless.

He was grateful also that his two charges were bright, clever children, and not lazy as he himself had sometimes been. Eldiril had some difficulty with the phonetic changes from Sindarin to Quenya, and Merenor's pronunciation was frankly awful, but they were coming along nicely, and they were at least hard-working children. Maglor was not the sort to deny the inherent value of any language, even (rather controversially) in Orkish and Black Speech, and the two children were already fluent in Adûnaic and Sindarin as most Númenorean children of any background and station were, but if noble parents wanted their to learn Quenya because they thought it superior to all other languages, Maglor wasn't going to complain about the steady source of income.

"Master Eärion?"

For reasons that ought to be apparent to anyone who knew of his history, Maglor had not told his employers who he was. It was apparent to anyone who looked at him that he was a Quendë, and one of the Amanyar at that; he was Lachend, and there was no way to hide that. He was an Exile, and he did not try to hide that, either. But Maglor told his employers, Lord Beldir and Lady Nethlír, that he had been in the service of the High King until the time of the Nirnaeth.

And honestly, that wasn't really a lie, either. Maglor of the House of Fëanor _had_ served the High King until the time of the Nirnaeth. Then, Turgon had taken the Kingship, and every Noldo living outside of Gondolin may as well have not had a High King.

He told them that his hands had been burned during the Nirnaeth, which was a lie. He told them that he could still write, which was surprisingly not a lie, though Maglor could not write as neatly as he used to be able to.

He said that his name was Eärion, which was only half of a lie, for though it was not a name his parents had given him, Maglor had become a son of the Sundering Sea as much as anyone could be.

"Master Eärion?"

There was a hand tugging on his sleeve, and when Maglor looked down to his left, he found Eldiril and little Merenor staring up at him with hopeful expressions on their faces.

Unlike some of the people here, Beldir and Nethlír had sensibly planned things so that there would be a gap of twelve years between their two children, as any of the Quendi would have done. Maglor sometimes wondered why they had not engaged a tutor to teach Eldiril Quenya when she was old enough, and had instead waited until they had their son and Merenor was old enough to learn to do so. He suspected that he knew the answer (that, quite frankly, they didn't consider Eldiril worth the time, effort and money on her own), and suspected that Eldiril knew the answer too—she studied with such diligence that she must have been aware of what would happen if she fell behind—but neither of them ever alluded to this. No one else did either, so Maglor did not make an issue of it. She was going to have a harder time than her brother already, learning the language as a near-adult than as a child, but Maglor saw no need to point that out.

Eldiril, aged nineteen, and Merenor, aged seven, both stared at him, before the former spoke. "Master Eärion, have you finished looking over our papers yet?" she asked, with a serious expression that still startled him somewhat in its intensity. Maglor knew that the Dúnedain and the Quendi intermarried rather more often in Númenor than they did in Endóre; he sometimes wondered if his charges were the descendants of such a union.

He smiled gently at them, holding up his gnarled hands for emphasis. "No, children, I have not. It takes me rather more time to make corrections than it would for you."

"Sorry," Merenor piped up. He smiled guilelessly up at Maglor, the way any child innocent of his deeds would have done. If only he knew. "We were going to go outside and play."

"Do that. I'll come look for you when I have finished."

Sometimes, Maglor wondered what Maedhros would say if he could see him now.

Actually, he did not have to wonder; he knew exactly what his brother would have said.

"_Do you think that those children will be your salvation? Do you think that there can be any salvation you—for us?"_

Maglor did not intend to return to Aman. He had no intention of seeking out the Valar's pardon, as they had commanded the Exiles to do. He had nothing to say to the Valar; his transgressions were committed against the Falmari and the Sindar and the refugees of the Havens of Sirion. The Valar might have thought it was a grievous sin for the Amanyar to seek out Endóre, but Maglor seemed to recall that Ilúvatar had created _all _of Arda for his Children, not simply Aman. Besides the Oath bound him still, and neither did he wish to go to Aman seeking relief from its binding, to find that there was no healing even there, not for him.

(Sometimes, he feared, deep in the dark of night, that the time would come when he would miss Aman, when he would want to return, when what little pride he had left would finally crumble in the face of remorse. He would wish to return home, but would never be able to do so. He would always be the Exile, and he would always long for the kin who he had been separated from by tide or death. In Beleriand the Noldor had learned to live with death and separation, and Maglor could live with it too, however difficult it might be for him. But if he was overcome with sea-longing, if he found within himself an overwhelming longing for Aman, he was not sure how he would ever bear it.)

Some might have argued that in coming to Númenor Maglor was trying to work up the nerve to return to Aman, but he was not. He had simply wished to see this new land, this land that one of his fosterlings had once ruled.

All the same, he wished sometimes that he had not agreed to act as tutor to such children as Eldiril and Merenor. He wished that he had not become the tutor of a child with such a serious expression as Eldiril, of a child of such irrepressible cheer as Merenor. It would be alright, he was sure, given time. He had to say that, to keep from seeing shadows of what could never be again at his feet. He had to say that to keep from calling them by names that were not theirs.

Time was moving ever on and on, and it would move without him, it seemed. That was the fate of the Exile, to watch the world move on without him.

In the musty house, in the silence, sitting in the sunlight, Maglor peered out of the window. Eldiril had taken one of her books (Adûnaic and not Quenya or Sindarin) out into the garden, while Merenor was crawling around under the bushes, likely to receive a scolding from his mother later for mussing his fine clothes. He imagined other children who had played in a courtyard covered in stone, completely barren except for a single tree.

The world had changed since he was last recognized as a prince of the Noldor. It would not stop. There would come a day when he would not even recognize the stars in the sky.

Maglor would simply have to live with that.

* * *

**Note**: I decided that since Maglor is supposed to be really fascinated with languages and since the House of Fëanor are kind of subversives, he would be able to see linguistic value in Orkish and Black Speech even if most actively refuse to acknowledge that there are any redeeming qualities to those languages. I feel like, if Fëanor had lived long enough, he would probably be entertained for a long time doing studies on Black Speech and the various dialects of Orkish. However, he still approves of the fact that "proper" Númenoreans do the same as the Amanyar consider appropriate and usually space having children out over intervals of at least ten years, despite the fact that while the Númenoreans are far more long-lived than normal humans, they're not immortal, and could probably stand to have children more frequently.

Quendë—Elf (plural: Quendi)  
Endóre—Middle-Earth (Quenya)  
Andustar—the western promontory of Númenor  
Falmari—those among the Teleri who completed the journey to Aman; the name is derived from the Quenya falma, '[crested] wave.'  
Amanyar—those Elves of Aman  
Lachend—'Flame-eyed'; a name given to the Noldor by the Sindar, referring to the light of the Trees that shined in the eyes of those Noldor born in Aman during the Years of the Trees (plural: Lechind) (Sindarin)


End file.
